


Face to Face

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [22]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, Gen, Jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 01:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6449185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some of the Wives discuss Furiosa's presence in the Vault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Face to Face

What infuriated Angharad was that Furiosa did not just _look_ like an Imperator, she _was_ one. She treated them like any Imperator would, speaking only when spoken to, observing their lessons like someone watching a dog stand on its hind legs. Never did she let slip that she was still the same green-eyed warrior Angharad had met on Citadel sands, and when Angharad tried to _talk_ to her, to find _someone_ under the Imperator’s grease, Furiosa only stared and tightened her lips in their stubborn silence.

One day, after Capable had coaxed her away into their bedroom, Toast slouched against the headboard and looked up at the two of them, a familiar anger on her face. It was not an anger that had anything to do with the Wives, precisely, but they were often the only targets.

“Why does it surprise you?” Toast asked, “That the Imperator won’t answer you? I don’t understand why you’d even want to speak to her.”

“They _knew_ each other,” Tarl said, full of the same directionless, bitter anger that Toast felt. “ _Before_.”

“That’s right,” Angharad said fiercely, because she was never one to back down from a fight. She and Toast had a peculiar, furious tenderness with each other. They fought more than they spoke, but they were still sisters at the end of the day when they curled up to wait for Capable or the Dag. “I was Wretched, and I saved her life, and she saved my water and we were like two ribs from the same spine.”

Capable, who had been standing with one hand wrapped gently around Angharad’s arm, moved away. She sat on one of the beds and reached down to pull Caelai into her lap, focussed completely on smoothing the hare’s fur along her back. Angharad stood alone in the doorway, Adara’s head under her other hand, and looked between Toast and Capable with a mixture of longing and frustration on her face. Angharad had never been one to hide her emotions.

“Sounds like you know her better than you know us,” Toast said, still sour. Toast was the blunt one, the one who would say terrible things because they needed to be said. In the Vault, there was no shortage of terrible things.

“I– I thought I did,” Angharad said, her hesitation one of the first signs any of them had ever seen of uncertainty from her. “I thought I knew her.”

“They raised one of the Wretched to be an Imperator?” Toast asked, half-rhetorical. “I don’t think so.”

“She _was_. She was Wretched as I was,” Angharad insisted, but Adara spoke in her rumbling purr.

“That is not all she was. She was not always Wretched.”

“So what?” Capable muttered, still not looking up from her careful parting of Caelai’s fur. The other Wives looked at her in silence until Capable shook her head irritably and glared at each of them in turn. “There’s an Imperator in the Vault. Who cares where she came from?”

Angharad opened her mouth to speak, but did not. Adara took a breath to answer, but did not.

Toast only snorted in agreement and rolled over to lay down with her back to them. Tarl heaved himself up from the foot of the bed into her arms, and the two continued their conversation privately.

Angharad, after a long hesitation, went to sit on the opposite bed from Capable, leaning forward and wrapping her hands together. “What is it you’re afraid of?” she asked, as gently as she knew how. Which was not very.

Capable took a long time answering. When she did, she put each word very carefully one after another, so that her sentences were slow, piecemeal. “I thought I knew what being… being powerless, meant. I was alone for a long time. I grew up alone.”

Caelai flicked her ears several times, and Capable’s hands on her daemon fell still. “Since we’ve been in the Vault, we haven’t been alone,” the hare said, quiet but more sure of herself than her human was. “Please don’t fault us for being scared when you make us feel alone again.”

“But you’re _not_ alone,” Adara said, her ears flat against her skull. “Remember Miss Giddy’s stories. As long as we live, we are _not_ powerless.”

It was easy to say that. Harder to believe it. Capable shook her head, and did not answer right away.

“I’m sorry, Angharad, but trying to be friends with an Imperator isn’t something that feels like sisterhood. Doesn’t feel like a good idea.” Caelai had always been the braver one, between the two of them.

Angharad ground her teeth, but it was her turn to be kept silent by hard answers. Hard to parse out her own feelings, when Furiosa still stood guard outside. When Furiosa was standing guard for _Joe_. “I know. But… this is not all she is. Not all she was.”

“Whatever she was,” Capable said, and there was bitterness there she would never put words to. Angharad did not deserve her jealousy. “She’s an Imperator now.”

“I know.” There was grief in Angharad’s voice, such genuine grief that Capable reached out, ran her fingertips across Angharad’s knuckles. Angharad smiled sadly, uncurled her fists to bring Capable’s hand to her lips and press a kiss to her fingers. “I know what she is, and what I am,” she said, turning to press Capable’s hand against her cheek. “But I would not be me if I didn’t try to change it.”

“No,” Capable said, very quietly. “You wouldn’t.”

And for three days, that was all they said on the matter.


End file.
